Surprised by Joy 📚
Sorry not sorry for all the book posts lately!
One of my dreams is to be well read...and I can't do that without reading. And blogging about it makes me digest the books even more.
My next breakfast book is Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis' autobiography. I saw it at Manna Christian Store and knew I needed to read it! For two reasons; one being I like the colour & design of the cover (I often look at a cover when deciding if I should read a book!), and two being the title. Joy as you may have discovered, is a big part of my journey, and I'm excited to see what C.S. Lewis and I might have in common!
So far (4th November), I'm finding it a lot easier to read than Dorothy Day's autobiography...and I'm loving learning just how much the Chronicles of Narnia seem to be shaped by Lewis' life. For example; his experience of boarding school, the empty corridors and rooms of his New House, the way Lewis wrote stories about a talking animal kingdom when he was little, and his fascination with England just to name a few things I've noticed.
Joy
Lewis describes three seemingly ordinary events which stirred Joy in him. Beautiful books (Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin), poems (Longfellow's Saga of King Olaf), and art (his brothers little toy garden) uplifted him and stirred in him a desire for something more. He names this desire 'Joy..' (as quoted below)
"...it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in it's quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief . But then it is the kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.
(Finished the book now, 9th Dec!)
Lewis talks about losing Joy, replacing it with all kinds of counterfeit things in the hopes of experiencing it again.
"Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is very often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy."
"...now came the Devil...I might now be a Satanist or a maniac...A 'Perhaps' is quite enough for the nerves to work upon. But my best protection was the known nature of Joy. This ravenous desire to break the bounds, to tear the curtain, to be in the secret revealed itself, more and more clearly the longer I indulged it...Slowly, and with many relapses, I came to see that the magical conclusion was just as irrelevant to Joy as the erotic conclusion" and later "I came to meet Magicians, Spiritualists, and the like. Not that the ravenous lust was never to tempt me again but that I now knew it for a temptation. And above all, I now knew that Joy did not point in that direction."
Lewis also comes to realise that Joy is not something that only happens at a specific time and place, but that it can be experienced again through memories of past Joyful times.
"That walk [with the beautiful surroundings and the promise of lots of reading ahead] I now remembered. It had seemed to me that I had tasted heaven then. If only such a moment could return! But what I never realised was that it had returned - that the remembering of that walk was itself a new experience of the same kind. True, it was desire, not possession...the very nature of Joy makes nonsense out of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want and to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing. The Desirable which had once alighted on Valhalla was now alighting on a particular moment of my own past."
A little confusing...but for example, for me, whenever I think of that encounter with Joy at my first Jesus 4 Real camp - in Adoration where I could not stop laughing - I feel a little bubble of Joy again too! (Lewis calls them 'stabs,' I call them 'bubbles.')
As well as that, Joy can be even more than a moment/memory, but it can impact your outlook on every moment!
"Up till now each visitation of Joy had left the common world momentarily a desert...reminding me of another world; and I did not like the return to ours. But now I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the bright shadow."
And finally, Lewis concludes that Joy isn't actually something to be grasped, or a certain event or moment. It points us to something greater.
"Inexorably, Joy proclaimed, 'You want - I myself am your want of - something other, outside, not you nor any state of you...And that is why we experience Joy; we yearn, rightly, for that unity...It's visitations were rather the moments of clearest consciousness we had...when we ached for that impossible reunion..."
Education
In boarding school, Lewis experienced bullying, and really struggled to fit in. His one sanctuary was the library (or 'gurney'), when he occasionally managed to make it there (I can relate - this was my safe space when I was in high school as well!). He hated sport, which was an enforced part of their times of leisure, but had to turn up and act interested so as to avoid punishment or further bullying. He describes his experience:
"I think that this feigning, this ceaseless pretence of interest in matters to me supremely boring, was what wore me out more than anything else. If the reader will picture himself, unarmed, shut up for thirteen weeks on end, night and day, in a society of fanatical golfers...who all carry revolvers and will probably shoot him if he ever seems to lose interest in their conversation, he will have an idea of my school life."
A big part of Lewis' life that shaped him into the scholar he is was his time under the tuition of Mr Kirkpatrick in Great Bookham, Surrey. Here is one of their conversations in particular that I found interesting:
"These fiendish German atrocities -" "But are not fiends a figment of the imagination?" "-Very well then; these brutal atrocities -" "But none of these brutes does anything of the kind!" "-Well then what am I to call them?" "Is it not plain that we must call them simply Human?"
While there his daily routine was; breakfast at 8, at his desk by 9, reading/writing there till 1pm (sometimes coffee at 11), lunch, a walk at 2, tea and a book at 4:15, work from 5-7, the evening meal, light reading, then bed by 11. Lewis says that if possible he would always stick to this routine. But he says (this cut deep!):
"It is no doubt for my own good that I have been prevented from leading [a life such as this] for it is a life almost entirely selfish. Selfish, not self-centered: for in such a life my mind would be directed towards a thousand things, not one of which is myself. The distinction is not unimportant. One of the happiest men and most pleasing companion I have ever known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything...and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindness are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude and admiration."
He loved books. Lewis refers to many throughout 'Surprised by Joy' that I have never heard of...but basically, he was very well read!
"I looked - I read chapter headings - I dipped - and next day I was off into town to buy a copy of my own...One other thing Arthur taught me was to love the bodies of books...The set up of the page, the feel and smell of the paper, the differing sounds that different papers make as you turn the leaves, became sensuous delights."
Friendship
I love the way Lewis describes the discovery of his first real friend - especially having felt so alone during his time at boarding school and at home.
"...discovering in a torrent of questions that we not only like the same thing, but the same parts of it an in the same way, that both knew the stab of Joy...Many thousands of people have had the experience of finding the first friend, and it is none the less a wonder; as great a wonder...as first love or even a greater. I had been so far from thinking such a friend possible that I had never even longed for one...Nothing, I suspect, is more astonishing in any man's life than the discovery that there do exist people very, very like himself."
It was actually partly through friends that Lewis was prompted to become Christian - one of which included J.R.R. Tolkien.
Nature
Lewis also really appreciated exploring the beauties of creation. His descriptions of his surroundings and appreciation of nature come through at many points in this book. For example, at one point he vividly describes the 'plain of Down' using potatoes and other descriptive words to help paint a picture. He realised that when you learn about something good, in a way it helps better prepare you for the Christian life as well (as the below quote shows).
"Total surrender is the first step...Shut your mouth, open your eyes and ears. Take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else. That can come later, if it must come at all."
He despises cars as they stop us from admiring our surroundings and keep us rushing around instead of taking our time.
"The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it 'annihilates space.' It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that the modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from travelling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there."
Convert to Christianity
Lewis was very hesitant to accept the Christian faith at first because it did not offer an easy way out of the suffering and pain that comes with being human, it was not very outwardly attractive "ugly architecture, ugly music (that hasn't really changed!), and bad poetry." and he disliked the lack of individualism and control the Church seemed to promote.
"But Christianity placed at the center what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer...There was no region even in the innermost depths of one's soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with barbed wire fence to guard with notice No Admittance. And that is what I wanted; some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, 'This is my business and mine only.'
I like how Lewis ties everything together in a chapter called 'Checkmate,' where He describes the way God has been working in His life all along as though he was an opponent in a game of chess.
"...All over the board pieces were in the most disadvantageous positions. Soon I could no longer cherish even the illusion that the initiative lay with me. My Adversary began to make His final moves."
God closed in on him, gently, slowly, in His own perfect timing, playing the pieces just right but in a way that didn't feel pressured at all. Lewis says he was given a choice, free will to say yes to God, and he did. Lewis examined himself for the first time and realised what a mess he was.
"Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded."
"The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own two feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape?...The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."
In Conclusion
"It was valuable only as pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter...But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles...They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that set them up. But we shall not stop and stare..."
Other Quotes:
"We debated whether the future was like a line you can't see or a line that is not yet drawn."
"Plato was right after all, Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore traces of his divinity."
"What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it."
"I said to my country, in effect, 'You shall have me on a certain date, not before. I will die in your wars if need be, but till then I shall live my own life. You may have my body, but not my mind. I will take part in battles but not read about them." "...would be insane to waste anxiety on anything so hypothetical as his post-war life."
"Our grown-up friends...now seemed less grown up - for one's immediate elders grow downwards or backwards to meet one at that age."
"The one principle of hell is - 'I am my own." (George Macdonald)
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